Who Am I? Part Twenty Six

Posted on October 11, 2017 by Author Richard F Holmes

A typical scene in the area above Lampeter where I lived.

My room was upstairs in the main house, which was an old farmhouse. There was a tiny attached cottage and a separate wooden cabin where the landlady lived. There had been a female tenant in the cottage, but things had gone to the dogs between the tenant and the landlady. There was a clash of personalities, but the tenant continued to live in the cottage for months amidst the awful atmosphere, until eventually moving on. I said to the landlady before I moved in, that if things didn’t work out I wouldn’t hang around like the previous tenant, I would move out immediately. Little did I know that the scenario would rear its head so quickly! However, an amusing little story for you, which demonstrates the strange ways in which spirit work.

Soon after I moved in the landlady placed an ad for another tenant to occupy one of the other rooms in the house. Enter Keith… She had advertised for a non-smoking vegetarian, however, Keith smoked like a trooper and ate meat like it was going out of fashion. He came up to the house to have a look, and for reasons known only to the Gods, he was offered the room. The first night he was there, he went out into Lampeter and came back with a kebab. You couldn’t make it up; I don’t think the retreat ever once saw a morsel of meat until Keith moved in.

Another typical scene high up in the hills above Lampeter.

I wasn’t really happy at first, having to share with another bloke, but me and Keith hit it off. He was about 17 years younger than me, and thanks to my experience with having the entities attached to me, I was able to see that he was a troubled soul. He’d had quite a chequered life, having once been a squatter in Hackney, London and having gone through his drug period. We were chatting in the kitchen one night and he told me he was getting voices in the head, and they were telling him that his ex-girlfriend was from outer space and that she had killed herself. I knew straight away what it was and I was able to explain to Keith that I could help him. Thankfully, he was open to what I was saying and at the first opportunity I contacted Sue and John in Gloucester. They told me to tell Keith to be in the house at a certain time on a certain day and they would perform the rescue work absently. Just as we did when I used to sit with them, they did the work in one of the development groups. Keith never looked back after that. Over the years he obtained a couple of university degrees, which enabled him to become a social worker and mental health worker. I was really pleased for him, but I haven’t seen him in years. However, I digress…

It wasn’t long before I realised the harshness of what I’d let myself in for. That winter seemed endless and the nights up in the hills were long and dark. Of course, I’d visited during winter before, but only for a few days at a time. To now be actually living here was a different barrel of monkeys. I thought that all I needed to do would be to put up a few posters here and there and place a few ads, and the work would come flying in. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. I made contact with the few spiritualist churches in the area, and so I was reaching a wider audience, however, you cannot earn a living by serving spiritualist churches, and for practical reasons you cannot have the same medium serving every week. Ironically, the bulk of my work was still in South West England. So, I’d moved to West Wales, but I was constantly backwards and forwards to the South West of England.

Another thing that I eventually found out was that even though this area above Lampeter was an area of outstanding beauty, it was also rife with negative Ley lines. It was no wonder that most of the people I encountered living up there had deep-rooted psychological problems; and that included my landlady. Ironically, most of them also worked professionally on a one-to-one or group basis with people who had problems of one sort or another, and yes, my landlady was an NLP practitioner, amongst other things! I will be the first to admit that I was not entirely innocent in things turning sour at the Court of Circles, but there was an incident that occurred one Saturday afternoon. I had a bit of a run-in with the next door neighbour who lived about 100 yards away. I’d gone out onto the quite narrow road outside and collected some twigs for kindling. After I got back inside the neighbour came to the door and accused me of stealing her twigs. She said I’d collected them from a stretch of road that was owned by her (this wasn’t true, it was a public road). She also accused me of climbing on her wall; this was also not true. I’m afraid I was less than polite, although I refrained from using bad language.

About a month later the neighbour crossed paths with my landlady and related this ridiculous story to her. My landlady believed the neighbour and that was the end of my stay at the Court of Circles. I decided I couldn’t live under these conditions and gave one month’s notice. She wasn’t happy, and there was an incident a few days after I gave her my notice of leaving, where she was screaming at me from across the kitchen table. It was all pretty dark stuff, but things were rolling in my favour. I’d got to know Keith’s mum and stepdad, and there was a music venue in Tregaron where we would sometimes go on Friday nights. This was before the smoking ban, but it was a non-smoking venue, which was really good. I went there this particular evening; it was only a matter of two hours after I’d been confronted by my landlady over “the mysterious incident of the stolen twigs”. I was telling Carol and Bruce what had happened. Bruce said they were thinking of installing a caravan on their land, and if I wanted I could rent it from them. I didn’t need asking twice.

In the meantime I’d been booked at what was a new venue for me, near Banbury, and I’d also been asked to go to Copenhagen to run a weekend meditation workshop, and do some private readings and healing. I’d taken to teaching like a duck to water, and my development group in Trowbridge had been very successful; in a way it was a shame that I had to leave it. But the feedback I got from the people who sat with me was great and I know they missed working with me. So things were looking up. Now, I will just say, that this period is going to run into yet another post because it will be much too long otherwise. So, I think part 27 is going to tie up all the loose ends bringing us up to April 2005. The roller coaster is about to gather speed!

Who Am I? Part Twenty Five

Posted on October 11, 2017 by Author Richard F Holmes

The harbour at Aberaeron, Ceredigion

In 2000 I’d started to make fairly regular trips to Ceredigion, West Wales. It is a beautiful part of the world that has the best of both worlds, in that it has a wonderful coastline and also a very hilly landscape. I’d got to know about one particular place through my ex-girlfriend Sue Crewe. It was a kind of retreat five miles up in the hills above Lampeter, in a place called Llanfair Clydogau (try saying that after 20 pints of Stella!). It was a place of immense beauty, pronounced “Clan-Vire Clid-Oh-Guy”, which consisted of one shop by the bridge over the river Teifi, a few houses and a community hall on the lower level, and various houses, some spread quite a distance apart, as you went up into the hills. The name of the retreat translated as “Court of Circles”; I fell in love with the place and visited at various times throughout the year, so I was familiar with all the seasons. When bank holidays arose, I would always book an extra day’s leave from work and have a long weekend at the retreat. I went on beautiful walks, I painted and I meditated, or I just did nothing; either way it was great.

Now fast forward to 2002, I’m living at Rob’s place and my spiritual pathway was looking rather good, thank you very much. I soon learned though, that Rob, was the type of person who was very loud and wanted the world to know that he was there. On a few occasions I went out with him and I found it very embarrassing. Having said that it wasn’t a bad set up, we did after all, have one or two things in common, and he trusted me to look after the place if ever he was away. I was getting bookings at more and more Spiritualist churches too, so I was out and about quite a lot with my work as a medium.

My new job with the utility company was like most jobs. It was a new challenge when I came back after my illness, so there was the obvious honeymoon period. But the cracks soon appeared. Corporate politics reared its head and things went steadily downhill. I needed a change; but what? After a while, and inevitably, Rob got back together with his girlfriend, and almost immediately she moved in. I did the decent thing and asked if they wanted me to move out, but both of them said they wanted me to stay. However, it was only a matter of time before all the things that had driven them apart, twice already, reared their heads again. I was caught in the middle of it. Eventually, they split again and his girlfriend moved out; but something had shifted. Instead of it being as it was before, it became me living in a very grumpy bloke’s house. Rob became very unreasonable, and quite unbelievably, he banned me from the living room. It was almost laughable. But by this time I had already made up my mind what I was going to do. It was now October 2003 and I’d already told Rob I’d be moving out at the end of the month. I have to admit to feeling a bit miffed when he implied that I might be wanting to run away with his door key! We’d known each other for a few years, and this was indicative of his current state of mind that he would even think that I’d do such a thing.

I’d told my friend Sue (no, not Sue Crewe, the other one!) what was going on and she said that any time I wanted I could move into her spare room. So, my master plan was this. There had been some changes at the retreat in Wales, and the opportunity arose for me to be able to rent a room on a permanent basis. I decided that I was going to throw caution to the wind and give up the security of full-time employment. I was going to move to West Wales and do my spiritual work on a self-employed basis; simple! Don’t you believe it. What followed was nothing short of a roller-coaster ride, which was at times painful, but from which I would emerge yet further on from the sad, lost soul that I had once been. I gave my notice in at the utility company, arranging to leave on the last Friday of the month. I also arranged with Sue that I would move into her place for 10 days or so before I left.

I moved my stuff out of Rob’s place over the course of a couple of days; there was no way I was going to live in that atmosphere for any longer. I told him I’d be going at the end of the week instead of the end of the month; it was at this point that he suggested I might want to steal his door key. I then felt that I wasn’t even going to wait that long. I loaded the last few things into my car, locked the door behind me for the last time, put his key in an envelope and posted it back through the door, and that was that. I saw him once or twice from a distance during visits back to Swindon, but apart from that our paths have never crossed again.

It was a Godsend that Sue let me stay at her place. The 10 days flew by and the big moment came. I said my farewells and set off for The Court of Circles. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I will have to write this post in two parts as it would be far too long, so hold on, the next phase is just around the corner…

Who Am I? Part Twenty Four

Posted on October 4, 2017 by Author Richard F Holmes

Just prior to moving into Sad Steve’s place, another friend of mine, Rob, approached me and said he was looking for a lodger. I told him that I was looking to move, but after we agreed that I would rent a room from him, he had big problems in his personal life and it all fell through. However, it would rear its head again before long. So, I was doing well in the spiritual development group in Gloucester and I had moved into Sad Steve’s house. So far, so good.

Another friend of mine, Jacqui, that I knew from working on the call centre, had left the company, taken her kids and moved to Swansea to do a university course. Jacqui was a single mum and I’d always admired the way she took life by the scruff of the neck every time it tried to batter her down. We had got on well and kept in touch, and we had arranged for me to go and visit her; it was during the time in the UK when we have three bank holidays in quick succession, but I can’t remember which particular one it was. A day or two before I was due to set off, I had a phone call from John Geis. He asked what I was doing on the coming Saturday at around 11:00 am. I said I was going to Wales; why? He said he wanted me to come to the centre because they “wanted to bring me on spiritually”. I thought, “how convenient”, I had to drive right past the centre on my way to Swansea. I felt rather pleased with myself; I was obviously doing so well in the group that they wanted to elevate me to new heights. Well, it wasn’t quite like that…

When I got there I was ushered into the healing room, where I saw four chairs arranged in a circle. There was John, his wife Sue, and another lady who had been going to the centre for a long time. We sat around in a circle and John laid it on me. There had been a healing workshop at the centre a few weeks previously, and a lady that I’d worked with during the course of the day had told John and Sue that she’d felt something really negative around me. John and Sue have ways of investigating these things and they proceeded to tell me that I had several negative entities attached to me. They also explained the implications and went on to say that in all likelihood, they had been there for many years. It explained so much. This would have contributed greatly to the terrible depression that I experienced; it explained not being able to get to sleep during my darkest times, it explained the intensity of the pain I experienced and it also explained how my mood could change so quickly. These are all classic symptoms of entity attachment. People who don’t understand the concept of having entities, either attached to a property or a person, tend to call these things poltergeists or evil spirits.

It seems I’d been summoned in order that John, Sue and the other lady could carry out what we call “rescue work”. In other words, they would remove the spirit attachments and send them back to the light in order that they too could carry on their spiritual journey. Religion tends not to understand this kind of thing and still employs the extremely cruel and outdated method of exorcism. Exorcism simply invokes horrendous energies that chase the “stuck” soul away. Exorcism does not guide lost souls back to the light, so all that happens is that they end up somewhere else and have to start all over again. Normally, if an entity is in a house and causing ructions, it’s not because it’s evil. It’s simply trying to attract attention because it needs help. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but that is a story for another day. It was an interesting experience, which once commenced, was over quite quickly. This was yet another step forward.

Some weeks later it emerged that there was another stage of cleansing that I had to go through that would finally allow me to leave my old sad self behind. This was something that came along unexpectedly and it wasn’t very nice. We were sitting in our development circle one Tuesday night, and during one of our meditations, I had the most horrific experience. It is not relevant to go into details but I can explain the concept. Imagine that a motorbike has revved up and driven away. The bike is soon out of sight, but you can still hear the engine in the distance, and even as the sound of the engine fades away, you can still smell the exhaust fumes. Well, that is the same principle as what I experienced. I’d had a lot of inner “stuff” dissolved via a combination of the operation in Chelmsford, the removal of the entities and the discipline of attending the development group and my own meditation regime. However, the exhaust fumes of my past were still hanging around; and it was the dissipation of these exhaust fumes that gave me the very unpleasant experience during the meditation. But the blackness from the cesspit that had formed within my soul was now gone forever. I was free from my past.

Before long I started to go out with Sue and John when they were serving Spiritualist churches. I would do the reading, if it was a Divine Service, and also one or two mediumistic messages. Come June 2002 I was out on my own. Then by the end of 2002 I was asked to run a development group of my own in Trowbridge. I was suddenly extremely busy. I was working full-time, sitting in the development group on Tuesdays (except if I had a church booking as a medium), I was running my own group every other Wednesday and I was serving churches at weekends (although it was not every weekend). It was still a very busy life, and in march 2002 another change was instigated.

I was at work one day at the utility company when the phone rang. I was surprised to hear that it was Rob on the other end. He wanted to know what my living situation was. I told him I was living at Sad Steve’s and how it was driving me up the wall. He apologised profusely for what had happened before and said that things had changed and he was looking for a lodger. His relationship had broken up (again) and he wanted someone he knew and trusted. Rob and I knew each other from the gym, we had become friends through our common interest of being fans of Chelsea FC. I accepted his offer. It was again very cheap, although not quite as cheap as Sad Steve and there would be none of this “no visitors after 9:00 pm” rubbish. Living at Steve’s had served a purpose, but it was now time to move on. Living with Rob was not without its problems and in October 2003 I was on the move again. Watch this space; we are heading for some incredible times…

Who Am I? Part Twenty Three

Posted on October 4, 2017 by Author Richard F Holmes

Stephen Turoff in the waiting room at his clinic in Chelmsford.

My life really started to take off, and I’m going to try in this post, to bring us up to the end of 2003, which is where this particular era ended. I just need to tie up a few loose ends along the way. I had always wondered why my long-term excesses with alcohol had never had an adverse effect on my body. But I’d also assumed that it was because I’d never been much into drinking really hard liquor and I’d also always maintained a very healthy appetite. During the Christmas period of 2000, while I was still off work, I “treated” myself to a small bottle of brandy. If I ever did drink brandy it was usually with ginger ale, and this occasion was no different. But what I did notice was that every time I took a drink it would cause a real burning sensation in my stomach, as though my stomach was on fire inside. This caused me a bit of alarm; now hold that thought…

It had taken me an absolute age to finish the Tara Ward book about discovering your psychic powers, but now that I had, I could start the book by Grant Soloman on the life of world-famous psychic surgeon, Stephen Turoff. The book was amazing, and not only did I learn about all the incredible healing miracles performed by Stephen, but I also learned that Stephen was a devotee of Sai Baba, so the book gave me further insight into the fuzzy-haired Indian God-man. Towards the end of the book, the author wrote about how he was sitting in his office in the UK one day and glanced up, only to see Sai Baba walk past the window. He knew that Swami was thousands of miles away in India, so this gave me further insight into Baba’s ability to be in several places at once. I started to seek out books on Swami so I could learn more, and at some point Swami started to appear in my dreams.

I was still living above the hairdressers at this point, and when I felt the burning sensation in my stomach, I decided that I was going to go to Stephen Turoff’s healing clinic in Chelmsford. My mum and my friend Sue came with me. We drove down in my car the day before our appointments were scheduled and stayed in a bed and breakfast place in Little Beddow, a short drive from Stephen’s clinic. It was quite an experience just sitting in the waiting room. The walls were adorned with photos of Sai Baba and various other holy men. Vibhuti had manifested itself in several places in the room. At one end was a kind of altar and in a corner was a small chair with one of Swami’s robes draped over it. Vibhuti had also formed on the robe. Before we were called in I had a very profound experience, which I wrote about in my book, The Amazing Journey. I went into an involuntary state of meditation, during which I heard what I can only describe as a “God Voice”, in my head. The voice was so incredibly sweet that words cannot describe it. Because of my heightened state of awareness at the time I cannot remember what was said. All I remember is that the voice sounded like that of a father speaking to a son that he loves dearly.

The experience in the clinic room was also incredible. Stephen actually had two small clinic rooms side by side, and he would simply move from one to the other performing spiritual operations. The operations usually only lasted a couple of minutes at the most, so it was like a production line; one in, one out and so on. We all went in together and I volunteered to go first. Stephen was a huge man; a gentle giant, and he’d once been a bouncer on the door at the Tottenham Royal, which was a dance hall in Tottenham, North London, not far from where I was born. I lay on the couch and Stephen asked me what the problem was. I told him, and he wasn’t very happy that I had not gone to see my GP for a diagnosis. However, he put his hands on my stomach and I chose not to watch. He seemed to fiddle around and then reach for something, then I felt as though one side of my stomach was being kneaded. It didn’t hurt but it felt very uncomfortable. He then seem to make a throwing action and there was a dull thud in the waste bin as though something had been thrown in it. That was that. He then went into the next room to perform another op, then he came back and worked on Sue. Then he disappeared again and then came back and worked on my mum.

When we were all done, there was one hilarious moment when this huge man had my tiny mother sitting on his lap. It was very funny and just the right way to finish the whole experience off. After we left the clinic room Sue said to me, “did you know that he’d taken a scalpel to you”?. I said, “yes, I had an idea that he’d done that”. She then said, “Were you aware that he’d removed something from you and thrown it in the bin”? I said, “yes, but I didn’t bother to check the bin to see what it was”. Sue said, “I was curious, so I had a look in the bin on the way out, and it was empty”! Incredible! I seem to remember that he took a scalpel to Sue as well but I can’t remember if he did to my mum. Unbelievably, there was no anaesthetic used, there was no blood, no pain (only a few moments discomfort), and no scars afterwards. The next time I meditated after that it was like no other meditation I’d had up to then. My chakras seemed to explode open and it was yet another step forward in becoming the new me.

From this point on I made a concerted effort to cut down on my drinking and I have not touched any spirits (no pun intended) since that Christmas in 2000. I think if I carry on up to the end of 2003 this post will be far too long, so I’m going to stop here; but while I feel like I’m on a roll I’m going to get straight on with the next part.

The Flawed Concept Of Western Religion

Posted on September 26, 2017 by Author Richard F Holmes

The existence of the God of Western Religion is not only scientifically impossible; it is also spiritually impossible. Even the name “God”, is a term created by humans for the purpose of communicating with a deity. Does it not stand to reason? In accordance with that human habit of wanting to name and label everything, the same must surely apply to the deity. Otherwise, how would we address a nameless deity? How would the church threaten the masses with eternal damnation? But I digress…

It is generally accepted by all religions that God exists in a state of eternal bliss as Infinite Cosmic Consciousness. Even the Christian Church’s view of God bears some resemblance to this. However, the Christian Church also objectifies God as a deity that exists separately from the rest of creation; including the human race. If this was the case, that God exists as a deity, independently from the rest of creation, it would mean that Infinite Cosmic Consciousness would have to displace a piece of itself. If Consciousness displaced a piece of itself it would no longer be infinite, as by definition, infinity has no limitations or boundaries. You cannot have a cut-off point within infinity where something else exists separately. Therefore, the whole concept of Western Religion is flawed.

Who Am I? Part Twenty Two

Posted on September 20, 2017 by Author Richard F Holmes

You may recall that I shared with you the story surrounding the book, “Discover Your Psychic Powers”, by Tara Ward? Well, what I didn’t say was that when I went to buy it, another book jumped out at me, “Psychic Surgeon”, by Grant Soloman. In fact, this book jumped out at me before I even clapped eyes on the Tara Ward book, so I ended up buying both of them. Hold that thought because I’ll be returning to this in the next post…

Sitting in the development circle run by John Geis was the best thing that happened to me since I found Wood Green Karate Club back in 1974.I became disciplined in daily meditation and I seemed to be going in the right direction. I was now back at work too and I’d moved out of the flat in Gorse Hill. All-in-all life had got much better; there was still the little matter of my drinking but I will also be coming to that in the next post. John’s group sat in the living room, while his wife Sue’s group sat in the healing room. Afterwards the two groups would gather in the healing room and chat over tea and biscuits. The healing room was a wonderful room; it had such a beautiful energy that it was impossible not to feel at peace when you were in there. Around the walls there were various paintings and pictures of holy men and spirit guides etc. We had Christ, the Dalai Lama and also a small picture of an Indian man with hair like Jimi Hendrix. He had one or both of his arms (I can’t remember exactly) raised as if in blessing. I noticed the picture but didn’t pay too much attention to it; I suppose mainly because I didn’t have a clue who it was and I wasn’t inspired to ask about the man’s identity.

many months later, Sue’s group had undergone some changes and she had a new set of people sitting with her. One of these people was a man called John. One night, before group started, myself, John Geis and the other John were standing chatting in the healing room. Somehow, the conversation got around to the Indian man with fuzzy hair in the picture. I said casually, “who’s that, one of them guru blokes”. John Geis looked at me in disgust and said, “that’s God”! I didn’t understand what he meant and I didn’t realise it at the time, but in that moment, Sri Sathya Sai Baba introduced himself to me and it was the start of a great love affair. It was always impossible to describe with words just who or what Baba actually was; he always used to say, “You can never comprehend who I am, so don’t try”. He has been described as a holy man, a saint, God in human form, an Avatar* and much, much more. But for me, the simplest explanation, and what I truly believe in accordance with my actual experiences of Baba, is that he was a ray of light direct from source, in its absolute purest form, that took human birth in a physical body.

The difference between Baba and Christ, for example, is that Baba was a full Avatar, which means that he took birth with all the powers that he displayed (and many more that he didn’t display), and he was performing miracles at the age of three. Whereas Christ, although a highly evolved soul, had to go through an awakening process to realise the truth of his being. I’m not going to go too deeply into all my experiences with Baba, or Swami as I called him, because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day, and I’ve already written so much about him in several of my books. Instead, I’m just going to give a bit of an outline and let the reader carry out further research as they wish.

Sai Baba was born in Puttaparthi, a remote village in southern India, on November 23, 1926, and given the family name of Satya Narayana Raju. From a very young age he was materialising books and pencils for his playmates out of thin air, quoting ancient scriptures word for word and composing wonderful music and poetry. He was beaten and even subjected to torture by his family who thought he was possessed by evil spirits. But at the age of 14, after many, many miracles and being hailed as guru by the villagers, Satya Narayana announced his Divinity and his mission for mankind, and was henceforth known as Sai Baba. As word of this incredible God-Man spread, Puttaparthi started to attract visitors from all over India and eventually the whole world. An ashram was built, which after a while simply couldn’t cope with the throngs of visitors from the four corners of the globe. The ashram, known as Prashanthi Nilayam (Abode of The Highest Peace) eventually expanded into a township in its own right, with shops, a post office, a bank, a police station and various other outlets. The darshan* hall alone holds 20,000 people, and every year millions of people pass through Prashanthi hoping for healing and guidance.

I was fortunate enough to visit Prashanthi on two occasions. However, by the time Baba gave me the inner call in 2009, and again in 2010, the ashram was just so busy, that especially during festival times, it made Vatican Square on new Pope day look like an empty room. As you would expect, there was also an element of negative press associated with swami; indeed some horrendous things were written about him over the years that were very upsetting for devotees. But swami just ignored all the negative stuff and quietly went about his mission. The negative press generally came from people who either had no experience of Baba, or who had experience of him but became bitter when he did not give them his undivided attention. The closest I ever managed to get to him was about 4-5 feet. By this time his physical form was very frail and he was in a wheelchair. However, I’ve written this about him so many times in the past and I’m going to write it again. He was an incredibly beautiful being. It was obvious to me that he was not of this world; he had a really dead-pan look on his face, but when he smiled it made your heart melt. He radiated pure love and I am eternally grateful that the Avatar took me under his wing.

For me his two greatest miracles are his fresh drinking water project and his series of Super Speciality Hospitals. Swami’s fresh drinking water project, which is ongoing, started in 1994 and its aim was to supply remote villages in India with potable water. It was the largest project of its kind ever undertaken by mankind, but thanks to Baba over 800 (and counting) villages have been supplied with a fresh supply of drinking water. Also, Swami has built several Super Speciality Hospitals where the poor and needy can get specialist heart and eye treatments completely free of charge. An architect that had undertaken work for the British Royal Family said that the planning alone for such a bold venture would take five years and the building many more years. Yet the plans for the first hospital, erected on the outskirts of Puttaparthi, took just five months, and seven months later no less than three heart procedures were carried out on the day the hospital opened.

I wrote about Baba more extensively in my book, The Amazing Journey, so I’m going to bring this post to a close now. However, Swami will pop up again before I complete my story. Below you will find links to a couple of old blog posts relating to Baba, a you tube video of his famous vibhuti (sacred ash) miracle and to my page on this blog devoted to The Amazing Journey

*Avatar – The descent of God into a physical body. Even though all of us are a descent of God into a physical body, an Avatar is the descent of God in its purest form into a physical body.

*Darshan – Within the sight of a Divine being.

Blog Post It’s All A Matter Of Perspective

Blog Post God Goes Home

The Amazing Journey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQtxYjMZTnU

Who Am I? Part Twenty One

Posted on September 6, 2017 by Author Richard F Holmes

Special thanks to Štefan Štefančík for the photo

I have always maintained that my strange experiences in the middle of the night began in 1999. However, the more I think about it, the more it occurs to me that it must have been earlier. I will also add that I will not be wrapping this up in this post, I will be doing that later and revealing the greater understanding of the subject that I have these days. I would be lying if I said that the experience didn’t frighten the life out of me. It didn’t happen very often but when it did I really knew about it. It all started with isolated incidents of being pinned down; completely and utterly unable to move, whilst lying in my bed during the early hours of the morning. The pinning down would always be accompanied by an extremely strong presence of spirit. I always tried to resist but it was impossible; all I could do in my fear was to send thoughts out to God to help me! You have all probably had experiences that are very real, but after the event you try to convince yourself that they didn’t happen, or that you just dreamed or imagined the whole thing. Well that is exactly how it was for me, and the first incident that I can actually remember would have occurred some time at the tail end of 1997; but I know there were incidents before that.

My memory of the finer detail is quite hazy as I type, but I know the experiences intensified as the new millennium approached; so much so that it got to the point where I decided to seek guidance. I asked at the spiritualist church and was given the telephone number of a lady who only lived a short drive away from where I was living in Gorse Hill. This was during the period that I was off work with stress. She was a medium so I went to her also in the hope that she would take all my problems away! I told her what I’d been experiencing, and straight away she said, “Oh, that’s astral travelling, just go with the flow and you will enjoy the experience”. Sure enough, and just as I thought it would, it happened that night. I took the medium’s advice and went with the flow; she was right, it was an incredible experience. I’ve had so many astral adventures since then that it would be impossible to say exactly how many out-of-body experiences I’ve had, but I would guess the figure is well in excess of 200.

In 99.9% of cases the pattern was exactly the same. I would wake in the middle of the night and be unable to get back to sleep. Eventually, I would enter a kind of limbo state; neither asleep nor awake, and it was then that I would feel myself enveloped by spirit. I would then be lifted from my body and carried off at incredible speed, usually through complete darkness but occasionally there would be a tunnel. I would then get dropped off at an astral destination where I was left to my own devices. Then at some point I would have the sensation of returning to my body. Interestingly enough, the return journey is always much quicker than the outbound. A whole new world opened up for me. I found very quickly that simply by thinking myself in a particular direction I would start travelling in that direction. I also learned very quickly to be able to pass through solid objects. Astral energy has a much finer vibration than matter; that’s why we can’t normally see it, but all energy appears solid in its own relevant plane of existence.

In the early days I always kept my eyes closed until I got to my destination, because I found that if I opened them en-route it put a dampener on things and I ended up straight back in my body. Eventually, I was able to open my eyes during the outbound journey, enabling me to view the surroundings and my companion. However, not all journeys have been smooth and I’ve only on very rare occasions had the same companion twice. On one occasion I had a soul whom I nicknamed “Einstein”, because he resembled that great man of science with his crazy, wild hair. It was so uncomfortable for me that I got quite angry and demanded that I return immediately to my body. I did go straight back in my body, but not before acquiring an astral bruise. It remains the only time that has ever happened to me.

Incredibly, on some occasions it got so boring that I questioned the relevance of the experience. On one such occasion I learned that all I needed to do was think myself back into my body, and I would be back in the blink of an eye. There has only been one time when I seemed to be stuck and contemplated the thought that I might possibly have “died”. I ended up outside what looked like a very small version of one of those open-planned newsagents that you get in airports. There was no soul anywhere to be seen except me. I seem to remember looking to try to fathom out what was going on in the “astral news”. All I could see was blank placards and I remember thinking that I was wasting my time. I “thought” myself back into my body but nothing happened! I did it a few more times and still nothing happened. Eventually, I started to make a very slow journey back to my body; it seemed to take an age but I got there in the end.

In the early days things were shown to me that indicated that these experiences can be used to show you scenes from previous lives. In my case I was shown things that I understand to be from my two previous lives. However, I have no way of proving this. Below are a couple of links to accounts of some of my more spectacular out-of-body experiences, and I will touch on the subject again in a future post. Thanks for reading, bye for now!

Operation Caravan

At Last – An Out-Of-Body Experience Worth Writing About

The Descent Into Matter Of The Individualised Soul

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Posted on September 5, 2017 by Author Richard F Holmes

A concise but brilliant description of how the individual soul is formed from Paramahansa Yogananda:

Spirit projects the desire to create an individualised expression of itself. The soul becomes manifest and projects the idea of the body in causal form. The idea becomes energy; or the lifetronic astral body. The astral body becomes condensed in the physical body. Through the integrated spinal passageway of these three instrumental media, the soul descends into identification with the material body and gross matter.

Who Am I? Part Twenty

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Author Richard F Holmes

A photo of the old Swindon College; my saving grace during a difficult time. Alas, she is no more…

In this post I will endeavour to tie up the loose ends from this stage of my journey, and I’d also like to give you a gentle reminder that I am trying to write these articles from the standpoint of my understanding at the time of the events. So, I was now on the right track but I wasn’t quite out of the woods yet. I was still off work ill; and it would be roughly another three months before I went back. At the request of the HR department I went to see the company doctor. I had already, off my own back, attended counselling (which was a waste time) and a stress management course. I wanted to be seen to be pro-active; after all, I didn’t want to be off work, I just wanted to be in a job where I was treated fairly.

Due to a past experience whilst at Royal Mail in the early 1990s I went in to see the company doctor all guns blazing! I felt quite stupid when he assured me that he wanted the best outcome for both sides. We had a constructive chat; the outcome of which was that I believed that he genuinely wanted to help me get back into work, and he believed that I wanted the same. He wrote a letter to HR recommending that I be redeployed back to Swindon. Once again, I will add that the finer details are not relevant so long after the event, and it will waste blog space by explaining why redeployment would be the best fix for me.

Unfortunately, the HR department were completely and utterly insensitive to what I was going through and their treatment of me while I was off work almost amounted to torture. My mind was in a terrible state. In hindsight, I don’t believe they did this on purpose, it was just that they were oblivious to what I was actually experiencing. They were meant to be sending me weekly lists of vacancies in Swindon through the post. But most of the information they sent was for jobs in London and Reading. At the time my tortured mind believed they were doing it deliberately in an attempt to drive me crazy. It never occurred to me that someone in an office somewhere in Reading was simply sending me a general list of current vacancies. There was also the farce of me having to go in to the Customer Service Centre in Swindon, believing I was going to have an informal chat with an HR representative on how they were going to help me back into work. It turned out I was going in for a job interview that I knew nothing about. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. So, they were making me go through the recruitment process to get me back into work! I eventually went back in March 2001, working on a temporary project. While I was doing that I continued applying for jobs and eventually bluffed my way back into full-time employment. Meanwhile….

My lovely flat above the hairdressers, that had served me so well, would soon be confined to the past. Lorraine, who had bought the whole premises soon after I moved in, decided to sell the hairdressing business, whilst maintaining ownership of the shop and flat. After buying the property and business, Lorraine had stopped working in the hairdressers. But, during my time as her tenant we maintained a fantastic relationship. Unfortunately, when I was ill and my paranoia was at its peak, my relationship with the salon in general did sour somewhat; again, the details are not relevant. So when Lorraine sold the business and the new hairdresser took over, naturally her priority was to build up her own business. This meant that she was there much more often than I was used to the other hairdressers being there. It didn’t matter when I was out at work, but when I was off sick and going round the bend it was a nightmare. I could hear everything downstairs. She would stay late on Saturday evenings, she would be in there on Sundays and she also opened on Mondays, which had always been a day when the shop was closed. I was going crazy and decided to look for somewhere else to live.

During this period I had started a couple of courses at Swindon College (but not at the same time). Unfortunately, due to my state of mind I left both courses before the end. However, for a period I was still technically a student at Swindon College, so as long as my student ID was valid I continued to use the facilities. This was a Godsend while I was off work as it gave me a reason to go out in the air every day. I would walk into town to the college and use the computer facilities. It was during one of my visits that I saw a sign on one of the notice boards, “room to let”. It would be a step backwards for me as it was obviously a bedsit, however, I was desperate to get out of the flat in Gorse Hill. Enter Steve…

I made a note of the telephone number and rang it that evening. Steve answered and said that he was no longer wanting to rent out the room and that I had obviously seen an old card. But, in the next breath he said I could come and have a look. He was such a pedantic person that I nicknamed him, “Sad Steve”, but he was harmless really and the rent was so unbelievably cheap that it was almost as though HE was paying me to live there. I had only been there a matter of days when he took in another tenant; a Slovakian girl named Dana. In Steve’s head, because he had taken in another tenant, he felt obliged to reduce my rent even further! In his world he wanted a certain amount of money for the two rooms each month, and simply split the cost between us. I seem to remember Dana’s room being slightly smaller than mine, so she was paying even less than me. In the space of what seemed like no time at all, Steve went from, “I’m no longer looking to rent out a room”, to having two tenants.

He was a man of record keeping, lists and filing cabinets. He only worked a short drive away, but he was up every morning at around 05.30 or even earlier, and would always be at work at least one hour before he was due to start. It was a very strange hotchpotch of people in the house, but we managed to bumble along. Dana and I both knew that we couldn’t stay there too long. Steve got us to sign a contract in which it stated that we were not allowed visitors after 9:00 pm. We both thought that he was an incredibly strange man, but we both felt sorry for him and the rent was ridiculously cheap, so we put up with his peculiar ways. However, it didn’t stop me feeling ashamed and embarrassed that at the age of 45 I was living in a bedsit in a strange man’s house and I wasn’t allowed visitors after 9:00 pm. I was the first to go, but that’s a story for the next post.

In March 2001 I started back at work and also moved out of the flat, and by now my spiritual development was making good progress; in November of that year I would stand up as a medium for the first time. But now it’s confession time! In Part Nineteen I said was going to elaborate on my strange experiences in the night “in the next post”. Well I’m not going to. Instead I’m going to dedicate a whole separate post to it, having decided that it would have made this post far too long. I’m estimating that there will be another seven parts to my journey. One on my “strange experiences in the night”, one on my experiences with Sai Baba, another four to bring us up to present day, and finally, a summary post. Hope this hasn’t been too long-winded for those of you who have stuck with it from the start! See you soon!

The Transitory Phenomenon We Call Life

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Author Richard F Holmes

The nature of our relationship with creation is that of subject/object. The mind (subject) constantly seeks out objects in the world and interacts with them; objects can be things or people. It then draws a series of conclusions and opinions around the interaction, which determine whether we are happy, sad or indifferent with the experience. Relationships are so-called because we all exist in relation to each other. When two people are in love; genuinely in love, it is not because they are in a relationship with each other. It is actually because the soul connection between the two is so strong, that the illusion of the subject/object relationship has broken down and dissolved away, allowing the two souls to merge in Love with each other and experience the oneness of consciousness. This is a great paradox of life; we are only in a relationship when the relationship has broken down!

The subject/object relationship is what is also known as duality; the illusion that things and people exist separately and independently. The only reality is consciousness, however, when consciousness has its dancing shoes on, objects rise up and appear to exist independently of everything and everyone else. But all that rises up must also dissolve away; this is the transitory phenomenon that we call Creation.